Cloud Sketching

This is a new drawing technique that was just passed on to me by my sister and I have no idea what it is called, so I am calling it "Cloud Sketching".

Please excuse the low quality here. I deliberately half-assed this drawing by using no references and doing everything as fast as possible with nothing but my own imagination and very poor hand coordination. The goal being to test how much this technique would hold the drawing together under poor circumstances. SUCCESS!

Basically, you pick a very THICC blocky brush, use your imagination to project the mental image you have onto the canvas and start tracing over it. The big brush size and solid colour will prevent you from drawing any details, and you will focus only on getting the form and silhouette exactly like you are seeing it in your head. Try to be as precise as you can, using reference to guide your imagination into something more believable than I did here. The goal being to paint solid volumes, so avoid drawing contours and focus on solid shapes instead.

What you get out of it is this big blurry shadow of volumes that has only the shape of what you want in all the right places, but no fine details. Once you're happy with the dark shapes, you pick an actual sketching brush and start sculpting the details and contours out of the volumes. This is a lot like seeing a cool shape in a real cloud and you're now tracing that cloud to make the image turn solid. That's where I got the name "Cloud Sketching" from.

PRO TIP: If you paint your clouds with colour, you can already introduce markings, clothing and form landmarks that will help you even more to visualise your final drawing. What's better? By the time you sketch your final lines over the shapes, your drawing is pretty much already coloured. How cool is that!

Try it out and see for yourselves what this can do to your art!